Maximize How You Individualize: Revealing Best Practices From Industry Leaders

Recently published research tells us that 59% of consumers in Asia will comment about brands online, and globally more than 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. Like never before, customers are expecting brands to deliver consistent customer experiences regardless of channel. The question becomes: Are brands across Asia-Pacific and Japan ready to deliver? And what is the consequence for inaction?

Join us for a one-hour interactive, online webcast in which The CMO Council will share an exclusive sneak peek into key findings from a 40-point benchmark of the state of customer experience across Asia- Pacific and Japan. The CMO Council has gathered a panel of regional marketing leaders to discuss the findings of the upcoming study and share first-hand accounts of how customer experience optimization and management have changed their marketing strategies into a more comprehensive, connected, profitable engagement (see bios for panelists below).

Audience members will be encouraged to submit questions, challenge thinking and get involved in the ongoing discussion around developing innovative marketing strategies to further impact revenue through advancing customer experience and engagement.

We are thrilled to announce the CMO Council’s upcoming live webcast, “Gaining Traction Across Digital Interactions.” Join us on April 18, 2018, at 10am PST/1pm EST as we explore the key issues, needs and challenges around advancing and optimizing revenue opportunities through digital engagements.

Among the issues to be discussed are:
●The operational requirements between marketing and product teams that are needed to empower collaboration and maximize transactional communication impact
●Missed opportunities for marketers to maximize relationships through connected content strategies across critical touchpoints
●Strategies for advanced segmentation and precision personalization across each communication
●Unification across diverse organizational ecosystems to align brand experiences and calls to action
●Leveraging valued and opt-in communications in an age of heightened restrictions and regulations around privacy and customer data

Sales and marketing leaders alike chase efficiency through automation and tool integration to scale their functions. However, too often they’re operating in siloes, inadvertently bombarding prospects and customers with disconnected, non-contextual outreach from all sides.

It’s bad customer experience. And in a time when businesses are trying to focus on building lasting customer relationships and a recurring revenue model, automating a bad experience creates alienation at a massive scale.

Join Justin Shriber, VP of Marketing at LinkedIn, to learn what makes a good customer experience and the imperative new approach required to help sales and marketing overcome this fundamental gap to align towards an orchestrated approach to tap into the massive source of economic growth and opportunity that is the B2B market today.

A CMO’s success often hinges on the success of the brand to drive business and grow revenue. Because of this, the CMO is in a unique position to optimize growth by meeting the demands of their customers while driving and advancing digital transformation. But transformation for technology’s sake will not advance the business. To be successful in today’s highly competitive market, the customer needs be front and center – the CMO must lead a truly customer-centric revolution.

Customer centricity is about building relationships, conversations and service around the needs, preferences and actions of individual customers on an ongoing basis. By putting customers first and meeting their expectations across all channels, you can deliver exceptional experiences that drive retention and build loyalty. The key is to deliver a consistent, seamless experience across all touchpoints, and ensure that all interactions are relevant to each and every customer.

To accomplish true customer-centric marketing, you must understand each customer at the individual-level, down to their individual Customer DNA, and be able to rapidly take action on those insights.

Join the CMO Council as we welcome experience and data expert, Cindy Vandecasteele, NGDATA’s VP of Product Strategy, and Jeroen Bronselaer, Senior Vice President Residential Marketing at Telenet, as they share their own experiences in transforming a brand with customer-centric marketing.

Key takeaways will include:

•How customer-centric marketing impacts the whole organization
•Why customer-centric marketing matters in today’s omni-channel, always-connected world
•The challenges and benefits of customer-centric marketing, and how you can put it into action
•Mapping the individual Customer DNA and turning that knowledge into profitable action

True one-to-one interaction is considered the holy grail of customer experience. However, according to a recent CMO Council study, only 7 percent of marketers are able to consistently create these individualized experiences across all channels.

For the third and final webinar of this series, the CMO Council and Teradata are concluding the conversation around shaping customer experiences by focusing on the importance of coordinated cross-channel messaging through a centralized hub for all customer interactions—one that listens to all interactions, automatically tells marketing channels when and about what to say based on all the latest data and machine-learning analytics, and applies contact governance so that your marketing is smart and optimized, not fragmented by channel.

During this one-hour webinar, our expert panel will share insights around how companies can build one central messaging hub for all customer interactions, regardless of channel. Marketers can elevate their marketing with a marketing hub to optimize and coordinate messaging, analytics and data so that the messaging automatically shifts, whether it’s time to sell or time to provide customer care, ensuring that each interaction is good for the customer and the brand. A featured brand expert will also share their company’s challenges in this area, as well as the steps they have taken in order to create consistent cross-channel messaging for the customer and make one-to-one experiences a reality for their organization.

Among the topics to be discussed:

• Challenges to achieving a full, cohesive view of all customer interactions
• How to balance multiple customer interaction strategies amid the focus on clicks and conversions
• Industry best practices and results from marketers who are coordinating their
marketing in a hub and how it has elevated their marketing

Today’s marketing machine must be aligned to the agile flow of today’s fickle customer, able to adjust and adapt in real-time, thinking and often predicting behaviors in context to allow an organization to swiftly advance, iterate and optimize across functional boundaries.

The CMO Council, in partnership with IBM Watson, will share new thinking and best practices for making this new marketing operation a reality in a one-hour interactive webcast featuring subject-matter experts and brand leaders currently making the bold shift to meet the customer where they stand. Joining the session will be Dario Debarbieri, CMO of IBM Watson North America and longtime CMO Council Advisory Board member, who will discuss the latest trends, from the API economy to the real opportunity of cognitive computing being applied to the marketing engagement engine.

It is easy to commit to delivering to exceptional customer experiences, but executing on the same can often be the hardest step. Join CMO Council, Teradata and N Brown Group (JD Williams) in part 2 of our webinar series to hear how organizations can enhance the customer experience and influence their buyers’ next steps to align with organizations’ desired goals and objectives.

During this one-hour webinar, Vicky Currie, Head of Segmentation and Selections in the Customer Insight Group for N Brown Group (JD Williams), will share insights around how the company transitioned from just collecting customer data to influencing customer decisions with predictive insight. Specifically, Currie will share how N Brown Group moved from mapping the customer journey to actually understanding where customers are in the buying process, and then intervening with the right offer, at the right time and through the right channel, to lead customers to a purchase. Hear Currie explain how the ability to combine insights with action has helped the company meet business objectives, drive revenue and, above all, improve the customer experience.

Joining the CMO Council and Vicky Currie will be Tony Brown, Vice President of Product Management and Business Development, Teradata Customer Journey Solution. Tony will share insights on the critical steps marketers must take to better inform and shape the buyer journey.

Among the topics to be discussed:

• How data and analytic insights can help identify a customer’s stage in the buying journey
• Why integrating online and offline data is critical for a holistic view of the customer
• Real-life business benefits of optimizing customers’ journeys

When it comes to the customer journey, marketers have traditionally focused on mapping the customer’s experience. However, with an ever-increasing number of channels and platforms for engagement, it is becoming more and more difficult to pinpoint the next steps that a customer will take. Every customer journey is unique, and likewise, every customer has different needs. As a result, so much time is spent mapping multi-touch, cross-channel journeys that the evolving customer has already moved beyond, making it difficult to take profitable action.

Join Liz Miller, Senior Vice President of Marketing for the CMO Council, and Kathy Koontz, Director–Customer Journey for Teradata, as they discuss the steps that marketers can take to better inform and influence the customer journey.

A few key topics of discussion will include:

• The importance of integrating online and offline data to get a better understanding of where the customer is in the journey
• Understanding which insights marketers can use to influence the customer’s next steps
• How to interact with customers at the right time and with the right message to influence and shape the customer journey

At the dawn of the digital age, email heralded a bold turn away from junk mail and battling the paper bulge of the overworked mailbox. But in today’s crowded engagement landscape, email has started to feel more like a cheap imitation of its scan-and-junk bulk snail mail predecessor.

According to the technology research group, Radicati, 205 billion emails are sent each day. Not even social can compete with the power of email, according to a Forrester report that indicates that people are twice as likely to sign up to receive a brand’s emails as they are to interact on Facebook. But, as email open rates are increasing year over year according to Epsilon, rising from 31 percent to 34.1 percent, email CLICK rates are in decline, dropping from 3.5 percent to 3.1 percent in Q3 of 2016.

Nonetheless, email continues to deliver. According to the Direct Marketing Association, in 2016, email had a median ROI of 122 percent, nearly four times higher than other marketing tactics including social, direct mail and search. And, according to a recent CMO Council study, 52 percent of consumers surveyed say email is a critical part of the customer experience, second only to access to a corporate website.

The spray and pray messaging approach of old is no longer applicable to emails. Where personalization reigns, what are the new rules of email marketing engagement and how have CMOs adjusted strategies to optimize emails as part of a holistic customer experience?

Join the CMO Council as we assemble a panel of marketing leaders who have all evolved email strategy to advance the customer experience and pull this powerful point of connection out of the junk mail pit.

In a study conducted by the CMO Council in partnership with IBM, 42 percent of marketers surveyed indicated that their top digital experience goal in the coming year was to better connect the multitude of campaigns being executed across the organization into a comprehensive, connected customer experience that could drive engagement throughout the engagement lifecycle. The challenge is how they will get there when 56 percent of marketers admit that data for their organizations is in more of a state of collection than action, or data is only being used to measure past activities. How will marketers—who are struggling to turn data to insight and insight into action—be able to reach their goal of a connected, robust digital experience? That is, how will marketing achieve this goal along with all of the other engagement, experience and operational goals that they must reach? How can data stop being a challenge and start being the fuel for innovation and engagement?

Enter the new era of analytics and operations that look to “machines” to deliver smarter decisions and outcomes through amplified analytics and improved experiences. You have likely heard buzz around machine learning, artificial intelligence or cognitive computing. Perhaps you have thought that these terms are more buzz than reality—don’t they all just mean the same thing? If you are like the 24 percent of senior marketing leaders that the CMO Council surveyed, you are not 100-percent sure what cognitive computing is or what value it could bring to the organization.

To help answer some of these questions and to bring some much-needed definition to this evolving and exciting conversation, the CMO Council will be speaking with Brady Fox, who leads strategy and execution for North American Sales with IBM’s Watson Marketing and Predictive Analytics group.

Data, data everywhere…but where is the insight to drink? This could be the new battle cry for today’s CMO. Regardless of industry or region—whether it’s a B2B or B2C company—all CMOs are facing the evolution of data and its twin: digital. From what digital transformation means to an organization to the challenges we each face as our customer demands even higher levels of personalization, CMOs today are talking about where and how digital and data converge and what that collision means for the bottom line.

Join Liz Miller, Senior Vice President of Marketing for the CMO Council, as she gets to know Maria Winans, CMO of IBM Watson Customer Engagement. The discussion will span from insights into how Winans is facing the digital revolution to the trends she believes will shape marketing and engagement in the months and years ahead. The one-hour, interactive conversation will also take questions from the live audience, giving participants a unique opportunity to pick the brain of a true peer.

A graduate of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Winans has spent more than two decades at IBM and has been at the forefront of both data and digital’s evolution. A true global business leader, Winans has served in leadership roles at IBM across Business Analytics, Collaboration Solutions, Mobile, Industry Solutions and PC Company, as well as serving as a Marketing Strategist for IBM Latin America.

Customers are not looking for extravagance. In fact, according to a recent CMO Council survey of 2,000 global consumers, conducted in partnership with SAP Hybris, customers crave simplicity. Customers want value and to be valued by brands. And customers expect brands to know and recognize them: 36 percent admit that they are often frustrated when they are not treated like a loyal customer regardless of channel.

Marketers, however, have admitted that there are significant challenges in meeting the very basic expectation of knowing, recognizing and responding to their customers. In the report, “Context, Commerce + Customer,” only one in four marketers has been able to leverage customer insights to advance troubleshooting in order to address customer issues before they become frustrations or problems.

As brands strive to deliver exceptional, connected, contextual experiences to their customer, marketers admit there are significant challenges to be resolved specific to data, analytics and the ability to leverage real-time customer intelligence to truly deliver value in the moment the customer most expects.

To discuss these challenges and the opportunities in exceeding the expectations of the connected customer, the CMO Council, in partnership with SAP Hybris and Deloitte Digital, invite you to join us for a live-webcast being held on Thursday, June 15, 2017. We will be sharing additional findings of our new consumer study including how consumers say they will react to continued frustrations. In addition, experts from SAP Hybris and Deloitte Digital will join the discussion to share where and how customer demands have shifted customer experience strategies, including the very ecosystem of cross-functional connections that organizations must forge in order to truly meet and exceed these expectations.

The latest research from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and RedPoint Global indicates that although customers are more connected across a multitude of channels than ever before, many organizations are still struggling to deliver the seamless, omni-channel experiences that customers seek, despite having a plethora of data, analytics and engagement systems implemented.

In fact, the research revealed that only 7 percent of marketers surveyed are able to deliver real-time, data-driven engagements across both physical and digital touchpoints, and only 5 percent are able to see the bottom-line impact of engagements in real time. The gap between strategy and delivery of these experiences stems primarily from fractured execution systems and siloed customer data.

This executive briefing will discuss:

• What are the next steps that marketers can take to bridge this gap?
• What internal capabilities and changes are needed in order for organizations to create the frictionless, omni-channel experiences that today’s connected customers expect?
• Where can organizations start when it comes to connecting their data and insights, to better orchestrate engagement in real time and across all journey stages and touchpoints?

Join the CMO Council for a half-hour executive briefing, which will also include a live interactive Q&A on research findings, data implications and real-world prescriptions. John Nash, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, RedPoint Global, will join us to provide industry insights and next best actions for marketing executives looking to overcome the roadblocks that prevent organizations from capitalizing on profitable omni-channel efforts.

As social data streamed into systems, the voice of the customer became distinct and immediate. But as sentiment became the table stakes of today’s intelligence, marketers started to look for more out of their social engagement and listening programs. This shift has brought about a call to identify points of opportunity in social data that drive the business forward.

This new mandate reveals new challenges: social media data can be messy, filled with lots of noise and few signals that point to definitive action. The mass of unstructured data that floods into systems is often incomplete and constantly in flux. One minute, a customer is “liking” a brand, and the next minute, that customer is telling the world about negative experiences and defection intentions. Wires get crossed. Sentiments can shift without warning. And slowly but surely, a marketer’s trust in social data can begin to erode.

The conversation around social needs to evolve—breaking away from the endless opportunities to chat, mix and mingle with the customer and turning toward an intentional strategy of leveraging social data to reveal business-driving opportunity. These signals must point to where a business can make money or where a business may be missing the mark…or it must deliver real-time alerts to problems that can lead to customer defection and discord.

In the world of marketing, these principles have been applied through the application of a marketing supply chain, effectively connecting customer and company demand for marketing materials (typically marketing consumables like printed content, promotional items, etc.) into a transparent, technology-powered network of suppliers and users to streamline processes and optimize budgets and utilization. Just as with manufacturing supply chain management, marketing supply chain optimization has led marketing leaders to realize great customer satisfaction and profitability, particularly through significant savings and the reduction in material obsolescence.

So now, savvy CMOs are turning to the customer and asking whether these same principles of supply chain dynamics can be applied to a process that actually reaches, engages and connects with customers. The answer is surely yes…but before we take that leap, the same rigor and advancement used to establish a marketing supply chain must be paid to content itself. Now is the time to realize the state of the content supply chain.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 32 percent of a B2C organization’s budget and 28 percent of a B2B organization’s budget is spent on content. In a recent CMO Council study on the impact of the connected omni-channel experience, 60 percent of marketers admitted that the new connected customer has necessitated a shift in content strategies and a call for the rapid development of new content in new formats and sizes. Yet despite the clear budget priority content has taken—as well as the clear call to rapidly advance our content development and management skills to meet the demands of our customers—why is content still developed in campaign and functional team silos, often lacking effective paths for cross-functional collaboration and distribution? Are we giving content the respect and attention it deserves?

When the CMO Council recently asked more than 200 senior marketing decision makers how effectively they have aligned physical and digital experiences, half admitted that these integrated experiences were selective, at best. Yet it is alignment, consistency and connection that drive the foundational relationship between the brand and the buyer.

The CMO Council, in partnership with IBM, will host a one-hour interactive webcast with industry-leading media, entertainment and telecommunications marketers to discuss how audience insights across the digital and physical experience have been turned into action, allowing these brands to personalize and enrich each engagement.

Multiple case studies will also be discussed during the webcast that focus on the power of segmentation and innovations around cognitive computing. Speakers include Liz Miller, Senior Vice President of Marketing for the CMO Council; Jody Sarno, Dedicated Client Partner, Communications Industry for IBM; Chris Crayner, Chief Digital Officer for NBC Universal Parks and Resorts; and Gayle Bock, Director of Customer Engagement for T-Mobile.

Most organizations are unable to deliver their brand promise in a consistent manner. Many marketers strive—but struggle—to present high contextual relevance across all channels and touchpoints that span everything from marketing to sales and service. Fragmented engagement systems create data silos that make it difficult to leverage all data sources in real-time to deliver the hyper-personalized experiences that customers expect today.

Solving this problem requires a customer data platform that provides key foundational elements, including:
1. A unified view of customers that is continually updated over time
2. The ability to leverage this unified view in combination with in-line analytics to intelligently orchestrate interactions in real time across all channels and touchpoints.

Join the CMO Council, in partnership with RedPoint, for a one-hour, interactive webcast featuring an expert panel of experience and data experts, including special guest Brandon Purcell, Senior Analyst–Customer Insights Professionals from Forrester Research. Through the course of this webcast, senior marketers will hear how unifying and activating data through a customer data platform enables organizations to better engage with consumers/customers while optimizing marketing campaign performance, building brand affinity and increasing customer lifetime valuation.

There is little doubt that marketers have embraced the need for a connected and cohesive customer experience. But while the new customer experience, especially the digital experience, has changed the way most organizations reach and engage with their customers, not all marketers are overjoyed with their current results. In a recent study conducted by the CMO Council and IBM, 38 percent of senior marketers admitted that the new engagement strategies in place have yielded mixed results, with some campaigns yielding expected results while others have not hit the mark.

Similar to results being spotty at best, marketers also admit that their goals for delivering a truly connected customer experience have also fallen short as only 6 percent say they have completely connected physical and digital experiences with all touchpoints, connecting and informing the next relevant and valued journey for the customer. In fact 42 percent of respondents indicated that their primary goal for the year ahead was to better connect and integrate loosely tied campaigns into a stronger, more cohesive experience that can actually drive engagement across the customer’s lifecycle with their brand.

So with that goal in mind, what needs to actually happen to deliver real customer experience success in 2017?

Architecting today’s customer journey is a top priority for senior marketing leaders, who must guide the customer through the path to purchase and craft experiences across a multitude of channels and devices, all while keeping sight of the ultimate goal: guiding a customer through to conversion. But there is a channel that often goes unrecognized and unsupported in this new digital age: the phone call.

According to a recent BIA/Kelsey report, “call commerce” is a $1 trillion influence engine as analysts estimate that click to call influences some $1 trillion in U.S. consumer spending. The firm went on to project that some “169 billion mobile calls to businesses (will be made) by 2020, driven by smartphone penetration, high commercial intent and the natural handoff between mobile engagement and phone calls.”

The digital experience has brought rise to an influential channel of profit in the phone call that must not be overlooked. As customer satisfaction is measured in quick clicks and frictionless engagements, tools like the Google call button have made it even easier for brands to actively connect digital experiences to profitable inbound calls. This call commerce demands a new set of strategies, campaigns and executions, in addition to new measures and metrics to better track these online to offline conversations.

Year over year, new strategies and plans are developed in an effort to boost the bottom line, ramp up customer engagement and establish profitable competitive advantages that elevate strategies to proven industry best practices. But in reality, even the best-laid plans get sidetracked. They are adopted only in part, stalled by organizational silos or tabled because of budget concerns. When implemented, results can be less than hoped for or forecasted—customers react differently…or not at all.

As we head into the second half of the year, the CMO Council, in partnership with Vindicia, will host a one-hour, interactive webcast to discuss the new opportunities in business models, digital engagements and experiences, including subscription services and recurring payments. We will also be discussing how leading brands, led by fearless marketers, have pushed through issues of complex processes and customer journeys rife with gates, stops and requirements and instead taken the path that feels counter-intuitive yet delivers a frictionless experience for the customer.

Among the questions and topics to be discussed in this hour are:

•Where and how are we unintentionally stopping our customers from engaging, transacting and lengthening their lifetime relationships with our brands?
•What are industry disruptors doing to change the experience and make waves, and how can we apply that same thinking to our businesses today?
•Are we so focused on creating processes and experiences that we are actually making it harder for customers to be loyal?
•New ideas and thinking around monetizing experiences and turning content into opportunity

Winning hearts and minds is a continuing challenge for marketers seeking to connect with consumers on an emotional, cultural or behavioral level. Whether you run marketing for a distinguished, dynamic or developing brand, there is always a need to continually search for ways to stay relevant, real and rewarding for customers.

Drawing on best practices and perspectives from the CMO Council’s latest report, titled “Building Brands That Attract and Engage Fans,” this upcoming webinar will feature both brand leaders and domain experts.

Topics to be explored include:

-The roots of brand attraction and cognitive connection
-How to survive and prosper amid market diversity and change
-The intersection of cultural and behavioral economics
-The essential ingredients for authenticity and credibility
-Fresh thinking on new ways to invigorate and magnetize brands

Webinar participants will include Liz Miller, SVP Marketing from CMO Council, Jennifer Grabenstetter, Executive Director of Global Communications- Product Care at Sealed Air and author John McGarr, President of Fresh Squeezed Ideas.

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide range of global industries. The CMO Council's 7,500 plus members control more than $400 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 12,000 global executives across 100 countries in multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Marketing Supply Chain Institute, Customer Experience Board, Loyalty Leaders, Online Marketing Performance Institute, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience.